A lot has been made over Microsoft's decision to suspend its email notification service for its security alerts. Confirmed today, the suspension of the email service is due to the new Canadian anti-spam law that goes into effect on July 1, 2014. And, after review of the law, Microsoft decided to resume the email notification service starting again on July 3.
After the announcement last week (which ironically delivered over email), the masses that depended on the service for security notifications spent a good portion of the weekend discussing the situation. Though there were some that supported Microsoft's move (probably all Canadians), the majority were incensed by the move.
As a replacement, Microsoft offered several RSS feeds that deliver the same information as the emails. Here they are:
- Basic Alerts: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/rss/bulletin
- Comprehensive Alerts: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/rss/comprehensive
- Security Advisories Alerts: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/rss/advisory
- Microsoft Security Response Center Blog Alerts: http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/rss.aspx
In case the RSS feeds every change, they are all located here: Microsoft Technical Security Notifications
But…did you know you can get the RSS feeds delivered as emails? Let IFTTT be your friend!
I've taken the RSS feeds provided and created an IFTTT Recipe for each feed. The recipe monitors for changes to the RSS feed and then delivers those changes to you in email.
Here's the direct links to locate the recipes on IFTTT:
- Email Microsoft Security Bulletins (Basic)
- MSRC Comprehensive Email Alerts
- Email MSRC Latest Security Advisories
- Microsoft Security Response Center Blog Alerts
You'll need an IFTTT account to use these.
Here's what the resulting email looks like:
Personally, I'll be sticking with the IFTTT emails because the format is much better and the emails are actually more timely since the RSS feeds update long before Microsoft's own notifications deliver over email. After setting up the IFTTT recipes yesterday, I just like it better this way.
